Towns were growing up
in various parts of the Basin. A new type of settler, the small stockman
or farmer, had come in, and with him a new standard of living and working.
A railroad was entering through Pryor Gap, eventually to make its exit
through Wind River canyon on the other side of the Basin. We found
ourselves on Meeteetse Creek, a little off the main current of travel and
settlement. We had not chosen wisely, if we wished our ranches to be cut
up into city lots.

For my own part, I
feel that we have something better than the smoke of railroad engines, for
our little corner of the Big Horn Basin is today one of the few spots in
it, and one of the very few in the country, to retain the flavor of the
old west. Meeteetse can still boast of being an old time cowtown, of the
type that one seldom finds now outside the movies, and the ranches of the
region are not so different, except for irrigation, from what they were in
the early days.

But even though we
were not in the most populous part of the Basin, we shared in the growth,
and contributed three towns, two temporary and one permanent, to the
Basin. The first of these, and the one that gave the most promise of
becoming a metropolis, was Arland, established in 1884, ten miles above
the mouth of Meeteetse Creek. Some towns grow up gradually and without
premeditation to meet the natural requirements of a region. Others, of
which Arland was a good example, are deliberately planned, platted and
christened before containing a single inhabitant.

John Corbett, whom I
met at his establishment on Trail Creek early in my mail carrying days,
had acquired in 1880 a partner, Victor Arland, recently of France, and
more recently of the Black Hills and Fort Custer. Arland wished to erect a
fitting monument to his name and at the same time to make more money than
he could at hunting buffalo and selling red water to the Indians. He
thought he saw the need for a town in the Meeteetse region. His thought
gave birth to Arland.

By 1887 it consisted
of a restaurant, rooming house, bar room, store and post office. The post
office, store and saloon were all in one building. There was also a dance
hall, where George Marquette used to play. Corbett continued to reside on
Trail Creek, but came frequently to visit his partner and note the
progress of the business. Vic ran the saloon at Arland, and became wealthy
at it. No one knows what he did with his money, but after his death
credulous people dug up the whole country around, trying to find the
treasure he was reported to have buried.

Old Arland was the
scene of many quarrels and violent deaths. Several women, of the type
commonly found in the frontier, mining or cow towns, moved into the place.
They caused more bloodshed than even the booze or the poker games. I was
present the night Vic Arland killed Rawhide Jackson, through jealousy over
his attentions to one of these women.

There was to be a
dance that evening. George Marquette was tuning up the fiddle, and the
crowd was gathered in the hall. As Jackson stepped into the doorway there
was a single shot, and he fell sprawling outside the door, dead. The crowd
stood around in embarrassed silence, eyeing the gun in Vic Arland's hand.

"Stop staring like a
bunch of idiots," he growled. "Start up the music, he can't hurt you. He's
dead." So they dragged his body into a room back of the dance hall, and
went on with the dance. Jackson was buried the next morning. A trial was
held later, and Vic was acquitted on the grounds of self-defense. Someone
testified that Jackson had been heard threatening his life not long
before.

There was a certain
tenseness in the air the night of the killing, in spite of the apparent
coolness with which the incident was treated. The rooming house was filled
that night. There were only thin muslin partitions between the rooms. Joe
Klein was making a fearful racket, so I pulled out my six shooter and
smoked up the building. Men began tumbling out of the windows on all
sides, thinking, no doubt, that some of Jackson's friends had come to
clean out the place. I slept in peace and quiet the rest of the night.

There is nothing left
of Arland now but a graveyard. One grave, better protected than the others
by a barbed wire fence, still has a marker with this inscription:

Here lies old Blue

With heart so true

We never knew her real
name, but called her "Blue" because she usually wore that color. George
Merrill, foreman for the pitchfork Ranch was riding along the road to
Arland early one morning when he came upon her lying in the trail.

"I'm dying," she
gasped. "Tahonus gave me some dope and robbed me of $400."

Merrill got her on his
horse and into Arland, but she died that day. Her greatest concern at the
last was her sins and repentance, and whether or not she was doomed to go
to hell. The cowboys buried her on the hill not far from Jackson's grave,
and put up a fence to keep the cattle off. They kept her blue slippers as
a souvenir. Years later I found a battered and faded blue slipper in a
load of hay I was hauling. Corbett had run on to it and slipped it into my
load as a joke.

Tahonus, the woman
Blue accused of drugging her, had come to Arland from Lander, and married
a Mexican gambler who had his headquarters at Vic's saloon. One of the
punchers, jealous of the Mexican, shot and fatally wounded him. They
started in a wagon to take him to Lander for medical aid, but he died when
they reached the foot of Owl Creek mountains. Tahonus never returned to
Arland.

Not long after Tahonus
left, Belle Drury and three of her followers had an establishment at
Arland. They gave a party one night to their cowboy friends; everyone got
drunk and the cowboys proceeded to shoot up the place. In the uproar that
followed Belle shot and killed Jess Conway, leader of the cowboy gang.
Nothing more happened that night, but a few days later a crowd of Jess's
friends came into the house and shot all four women by way of revenge.
There was still another death from this episode. A boy called Shorty had
been hanging around for some time, madly in love with Belle. After her
death he went insane and killed himself.

Women were not the
sole cause of the killings in Arland district, however. One evening as I
was on my way to Arland I was joined by John Wallace, who met me at the LU
ranch. As we rode along he suddenly and without apparent cause, became
sullen and moody. Finally he gave me a long, hard look and said, "I've got
blood in my eye. I want blood." I pointed to a rabbit that was running
through the sage brush a few feet away and told him to shoot it if he
wanted blood.

"You're the rabbit I
want," he said and pulled his gun on me. I knocked it from his hand before
he had a chance to use it and handed it back to him. We rode on together
to Arland, where I was to spend the night. I thought no more about his
actions; we got used to freakish behavior in a region where a man spends
so much of his time alone. I didn't think he had seriously contemplated
shooting me, anyway. I should have given warning of his action, as it
turned out, but I said nothing about it.

The next morning he
rode on to the Old Meeteetse post office, five miles down the creek from
Arland. The Smith family lived there, operating the store and post office.
Wallace and Smith had had trouble once, but so long ago and over so
trivial a matter than everyone had forgotten it. Wallace stepped to the
door of the post office and called to Smith, who came out to be shot down
without a word of warning. The murderer then got on his horse and rode
leisurely back down the trail, leaving Mrs. Smith and the children
paralyzed with horror in the store.

That morning as I left
Arland to return to the ranch, I met a man and woman in a wagon, who
stopped me to ask the way to the Smith store. I had just heard about the
murder, so I told them what had happened at Smith's. The woman began to
cry, saying it was her brother who was killed. Just then I saw Wallace
riding down the trail about a mile away. I pointed him out as the
murderer. As soon as he was within range the man in the wagon shot him
dead. Then he took a shovel from his wagon box, dug a hole near the spot
where Wallace had fallen, pushed the body into it, and covered it with
rocks and earth.

I asked him if he did
not want to mark the grave, but he said it was not worthwhile. Wallace's
horse and pack mule followed me as I went on down the trail. I stopped at
McDonald's ranch to report the killing and leave Wallace's animals. The
sheriff was sent out from Lander to investigate. As chief witness, it fell
to me to take him to the grave and tell him the story. Wallace's murderer
was given a hearing and then turned loose.

In spite of its promising beginning, its
skill for keeping itself always in the public eye and furnishing
excitement for all comers, and the fact that it met a real need of the
region as a base of supplies, Arland died an untimely death. Its
proprietor, Vic Arland, was shot to death through the window of a saloon
in Red Lodge, Montana, as he sat at a game of cards. His murderer was
never caught, but the assumption was that a friend of Rawhide Jackson was
getting even. The town did not survive its owner. It was too close to
Meeteetse, which had got a later start but was beginning to thrive. In
1896 Corbett carried away the last of the moveable property and Arland
ceased to exist.